Ever since warbling, hairy-nippled canuck, Alanis Morisette, covered the concept in song, I've been fairly shaky on the exact definition of irony. Despite several earnest attempts to educate myself on the matter, I still pause before labeling something ironic for fear of getting it wrong and being laughed all the way out of Journo-town. But really, EA promoting an indie bundle? I'm pretty sure that's ironic. That's ironic as hell.

Just to make things a little weirder, the deal is appearing on Steam rather than Origin.

Each of the six games in EA's Indie Bundle were developed by smaller studios and published by EA, and each can be had for 50% off, or 75% off if you buy the whole bundle. The games themselves are a likable lot. Klei entertainment's Shank and Shank 2 are in there, as are Vanguard Games' joyous top-down shooter Gatling Gears and Trapdoor Inc's blood-soaked puzzler, Warp. All of those games are going for $5 each, while affable RPG-parodies, DeathSpank and Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue, round out of the bundle at $7.50.

All of the games are worth picking up, providing you can stomach the awful thing their publisher is doing to the English language. The games are on sale now, and will remain so until May 9th.

Wow, that is a deal, some of those games are excellent. The way I see it, if it's bought on Steam, then Steam guarantees it, which is a beautiful thing considering EA is just shutting stuff down all willy nilly.

Publishing is physical production (making the discs and such) and distribution to retail outlets. And marketing if they're in the mood for that.

Or with digitally distributed games indie games can end up with a publisher involved because of the console market. Bastion was entirely self-funded and developed, but they had to get a publisher to put their name on it for console distribution because you basically cannot self-publish on things like XBLA. The only options right now are either a publisher or XBLIG. There's been disagreement over whether Bastion can be considered an indie game for that reason, and depending on whether you you define it as "self-funded and retaining creative control" or "entirely done with no outside assistance (even if that's not really possible/practical in some situations)", both sides are right.

Seriously, though, I have zero problem with this. The games are indie. As someone else mentioned, Shank was even in one of the Humble Indie Bundles. It's not like they're claiming Mass Effect 3 is indie or anything.

Publishing is physical production (making the discs and such) and distribution to retail outlets. And marketing if they're in the mood for that.

Publishers (help) fund projects the vast majority of the time. And having a multi-million dollar company run ad campaigns for you pretty much removes your indie certificate, at least for that particular game.

As long as EA doesn't actually own the studios that developed the games, I think they can technically get away with calling it an 'Indie Bundle' since they'd just be publishing games made by independent devs ... Maybe?

So EA launch a competitor to Steam, prevents PC gamers (who don't want Origin) from getting Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3. Then, they launch an indy bundle... I can't decide if I'm more excited to see what stupid stunt is next, or disgusted that this junk keeps happening.